A country appears – and all the companies which until then were under the jurisdiction of other governments (that of Ottawa essentially) must incorporate in Quebec as distinct companies and be subjected at the same time to the new “rules of the game”.

At that moment, more than at any other, an evolved people can determine how its company system will function. Thereafter, one can adjust one’s aim to define or modify its orientation; but at the moment of independence, it is necessary that the road map already be clearly drawn up and that, for a good stretch of time, each of the stages to be crossed must be clearly understood by all agents of economic life.

Independence does not allow this kind of laissez-faire. One cannot say to the companies: “We don’t really know where we’re going, but we’ll let you know as soon as we clarify our ideas.” Such uncertainty would be more detrimental to investment and to the whole rhythm of economic activity than even the brutal assertionofradical changesin structures and policies. Companies in competition with one another have remarkable adaptability. But they need to know to what they must adapt.

The usual form of economic organization in the world of today, the company can structure an infinitely varied number of workers, from the smallest to the largest. If it is permitted to view as a social advantage the avoidance of the large corporation which always risks dehumanizing work, it should also be recognized that modern technology imposes forms of concentration and gigantism which one does not reject without at the same time sacrificing a part of the hoped-for or already attained standard of living. It is thus, for example, that one can quite theoretically think of establishing in Quebec a number of small steel-works instead of one large one, but production costs would then be much higher. One would have to give up exporting steel while savagely protecting oneself against imports. And what applies to steel, applies to the lion’s share of heavy industry…

In other sectors, if nothing forbids the multiplication of small factories, one takes note, however, that for them to be competitive and dynamic, they wi have to be answerable to one large corporation in order to have the financial resources necessary for research, development, marketing, etc.

Conversely, there are nonetheless a number of sectors where indefinite growth in the size of companies hardly presents any true advantages. The economic utility of conglomerates (or “empires”) is perhaps obvious for the financiers who constituted them, but not for the community. All in all, the fact that one must be satisfied with only one steel-works does not extend absolutely to justifying at the same time the existence of Power Corporation! If regional flight gridsmust be unified, neither does it follow that it is advantageous for them to be the concern of the management and ownership of a single insurance company…

This insistence on the size of companies – or rather on a certain form of size – appears to us to be important, considering the objective which clearly will ensue from some of our options: that of reducing and in many cases, eliminating foreign control of Québécois companies.

can be strongly decentralized and that certain types of economic decision can and must be decentralized (we will give examples later), it will be necessary, in many sectors over which we will retake control, to push much further than has been done up to now the concentration and the size of operations. In a world of fierce competition, the prosperity of Quebec is viewed no other way.

From this viewpoint, there are several types of companies. Some belong to the consumers of the services or goods which they produce. These are calledco-operatives, although the term is vast enough to cover the caisses populaires — the most spectacular expression of the community economy – as well as Sun Life, one of the pillars of the traditional capitalist system.

Lastly, the majority of existing companies are private, of general classification comprising a number of quite different types: the case of the single shareholder who is a foreign company; that of companies with many small shareholders who never intervene in management (charter banks, for example), in which case, it is sufficient to hold 10 or 15% of the shares “to control” practically the whole business as one wishes. We also note the host of small private companies which have but a handful of shareholders (family or associates).

For a number of years, one has started to see the formulas intermingling. Thus, the caisses populaires purchased companies which were not co-operatives. Similarly, governmental capital began to be invested in a host of officially private companies. The Caisse de Dépôt, which invests the money of the Régie des Rentes, has become a shareholder – sometimes the second or even

the largest – of somewhere near 200 Canadian companies. The Société Générale de Financement and Soquem also began, with varied success, the introduction of governmental capital in economic operations which up to then had been private.

Starting from a clearly community pole (savings and credit co-operatives) and from another clearly governmental pole, two new forms of capital thus gradually enter the field of the capitalist-type company.

Any effort to repatriate the decision-making centres* and to reorganize our economic life will have to take account of these two poles, but without neglecting the contribution of individual savings, either. A true in-depth transforma-tion of the of the Quebec company system does not at all require excluding the possibility of the investor’s finding a place for his funds. It will often be necessary to get rid of a foreign shareholder or to eliminate the control of a financial “establishment”, but it does not follow that it is necessary to also eliminate share capital from small savers.

Beyond the mode of property, one must still evoke company management style. Singularly, in the case of the largest, it is well-known, those which manage are seldom those which possess. It is the technocracy of “management”, which nobody henceforth baptizes the technostructure“. It poses, in certain respects, the same problems as the technocracy of public administration. However, in the renewed economy that we suggest, it will be necessary to push quite far the experiment with new forms of management and decision making.

At the level of the Planwhich only an independent Quebeccan elaborate, it is understood that the workers, the consumers and the taxpayerswill have to participatein the establishment of objectivesand the broad outlines of its development. But this insertion into the company must also be found on the companies side, in the application of this Plan. We will return later to the role that can be played by co-operative management, coadministration or self-managementof a number of fields of economic activity, and which one would seek in vain in an admi-

* A reference to the federal-provincial structure of Canada and the division of powers between Parliament and the provincial Legislatures

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administration trop exclusivement centralisée sous l’égide de l’Etat.

administration too exclusively centralized under the aegis of the State.

It goes without saying, however, that while adding to the usual instruments of governmental intervention the gradual development of new forms of management of companies, we leave to research a balance between the two levels, research which inevitably will be long, delicate and difficult. Moreover, it will not be ― far from it ― a purely Québécois problem. Many other countries are already grappling with it.

Whether it be foreign or national, private or public, large or small, the company in any case posits this basic characteristic: it sells something, a product or a service, to consumers. And it sells it at a price which must usually at least cover the costs.

In the final analysis, there exist only two ways of attenuating this rationing. The first is to establish a floor below which the income of no citizen must fall. Initiated by various forms of social security, this policy leads to the guaranteed minimum wage and the systematic raising of wages of those who at one and the same time are the least protected and the most vulnerable among the workers. It is this perspective, which our program has above all explored up to now.

But there is another, at least as important, that we have not yet studied. It consists in removing from the company purview certain goods or services to make the offer less expensive or even free. It then comes down to the citizen, with his contribution to the budget of the State, to finance the new program. If he must still pay a price as a con-sumer, this price from now on willl be proportional to his income and no longer determined by the cost.

LA “SOCIALISATION” EN MARCHE

“SOCIALIZATION” ON THE MARCH*

Les précédents ne manquent pas.

There is no lack of precedents.

L’enseignement a été longtemps dispensé par des entre–

Teaching was for a long while dispensed by compa–

*Note: It could also be “socialization in the marketplace” or “socialization underway” or “socialization functioning”.

nies. Health, too. Exceptions conceded to the “poor”, anymore than government subsidies, have not really changed the essential form of the operation. Today, these traditional companies in the fields of teaching and health have virtually completely disappeared.

Nothing prevents one from wondering now if it is necessary to keep the regime of the company and markets in a good number of other sectors and for a great many other activities. Let’s quickly move to medications, which must be guaranteed cost free or nearly, as soon as possible. The same goes for dental care. Which logically follows from the stages already undertaken in the field of health services.

The creation of soil banks in urban areas, the rapid multiplication of public housing, a form of rent at once propor-tional to income and inversely proportional to the number of dependents, all that is not hard to foresee. And it is surely the only way of accelerating the restoration of our most dilapidated districts at the same time as the social amelioration of the most underprivileged of our fellow-citizens.

And insurance: what basic protection must be deemed to be an essential service that every society must provide to its members independently of their incomes? And if the doctor, the hospital and the medication are provided for free, by what baroque reasoning could one justify the ruinous burial?

Wouldn’t the changes which take place gradually in the techniques of information and teaching lead to the television apparatus automatically incorporated into housing and considered as a public service in the same manner as the aqueduct and the sewer? And vacation villages? And campsites?

But one thing is clear: the slip towards the public sector of products currently provided by businesses will not be stopped. As ever, it is therefore necessary to be reined in by the choice of priorities. With what does one start and at what rate does one continue?

All in all, the resumption of economic decision-making centres* is the necessary inducement to serious reflection on the company, its place, its role and its integration with industrial relations policy, at least as much as on the conditions of its efficiency.

*A refererence to powers belonging to the federal Parliament of Canada

Robert Rumilly:
Two important authors on the communist infiltration of Canada are Alan Stang and Robert Rumilly. Please read my exclusive English translation of two chapters from Rumilly's 1956 book The Leftist Infiltration in French Canada (L'Infiltration gauchiste au Canada français).

ANTICOMMUNIST ARCHIVE & STORIES:

EXCLUSIVE ENGLISH TRANSLATION
of the 1972 manifesto of the Parti Québécois, calling for a Communist State of Quebec
Segments translated so far:

UPDATE 15 August 2016: 100% complete! First English translation of 1972 PQ manifesto for a Communist State of Quebec. This is what we were really "voting" for in 1980 and 1995. There is more text in the PDF download than is posted online in html: https://www.sendspace.com/file/pgg7mg

Communist Straight Jacket Over Canada: Quand nous serons vraiment chez nous: 1972 manifesto of the Parti Québécois for a Communist state of Quebec